Darkness overtook us as we hastened from the broken pillar stone. I do not think that even with our horses we could have reached the camp before nightfall. The way back was farther than I remembered it, and the weird twilight came on with unnatural speed. Horses could not have outrun it. Also, with the swiftly deepening night, the eerie wail increased, as if the source of the uncanny sound were drawing relentlessly nearer.
Tegid kept one eye on the sky as we hurried along. As soon as he saw we could not reach camp before night overtook us, he announced, “We must make for the nearest slope. There we can find fuel for a fire at least.”
“That is well,” Cynan agreed. “But where is it? I can see nothing in this murk.”
Tegid’s plan was a good one; the banks of the mound were thickly forested, and firewood abounded. But how could we be certain which way to go when we could not see two steps in front of us?
“We should be near the edge of the plain,” Tegid said. “The pillar stone marked the center, and we have been moving away from it—”
“Aye,” allowed Cynan, “if we have not been making circles around it instead.”
Tegid ignored the remark, and we rushed on. We had not advanced more than a hundred paces, however, when Scatha halted.
“Listen!”
I stopped, but heard only the weird wailing sound, which, apart from growing slightly louder, had not altered in any significant way. “What is it?”
“Dogs,” she said. “I thought I heard dogs.”
“I hear nothing,” said Cynan. “Are you cert—” The bark of a dog—short, quick, unmistakable—cut him off.
“This way! Hurry!” shouted Tegid, darting ahead.
No doubt the bard thought we were right behind him, following in his footsteps. But I turned, and he had already melted into the darkness. “Tegid, wait! Where are you? Cynan?”
A muffled answer reached us. “This way . . . follow me . . .”
“Tegid?” I called, searching the darkness. “Tegid!”
“Where have they gone?” Scatha wondered. “Did you see?”
“No,” I confessed. “They just vanished.”
The dog barked again—if dog it was.
“It is closer,” Scatha said, and the bark was immediately followed by another, a little farther off and to the left.
“Yes, and there is more than one.” I glanced this way and that, but could see nothing in any direction to guide us. Darkness had penetrated all, obliterated all. “We’d better keep moving.”
“Which way should we go?” Scatha wondered aloud.
“Any way will be better than standing here,” I replied. I put out my hand and grabbed hold of Scatha’s cloak; she took the end of mine. “We will stay together,” I told her. “Hold tight, and keep your spear ready.”
Clutching each other’s cloaks, we proceeded into the formless dark. I did not for a moment entertain any false hopes of eluding the beasts behind us. But I thought we might at least find a place to make a stand if we reached the slope of the mound before the creature on our trail reached us.
We went with as much speed as we dared. It is unnerving running blind. Every step becomes a battle against hesitation, against fear. And the steps do not grow easier with success. Indeed, the fear grows with every step until it becomes a dominating force.
But for Scatha’s presence beside me, I would have halted every few steps to work up my courage. But I did not care to appear weak or fainthearted in her eyes, so I braced myself for the inevitable bone-breaking fall—and ran on.
All the while, the barking of the dogs grew louder and more insistent as they drew nearer. Their numbers seemed to have increased as well, for I thought I could make out at least five individual voices— at least, there were more than the two we had heard before.
Whether we would ever have reached camp this way, I will never know. Likely it was as Tegid had said—that darkness held no safety for any creature alone on the mound, and fire offered the only protection. We did, however, reach the rim of the plain and fell sprawling over one another as the ground tilted away beneath us without warning.
I fell, half-tumbling, half-sliding down the unseen slope, and landed on my side, knocking the breath from my lungs. It was a moment before I could speak. “Scatha!”
“Here, Llew,” she replied, catching her breath. “Are you all right?”
I paused to take stock. My jaw ached, but that was from clenching my teeth as we ran. “I seem to be in one piece.”
From the plain directly above us came the sudden swift rush of feet through the grass—as that of an animal making its final rush on its prey.
“Quick!” I yelled. “Down here!”
Diving, falling, rolling, down and down the slope we slid, until we came to rest in a sharp-thorned thicket. I made to disentangle myself, but Scatha said, “Shh! Be still!”
I stopped thrashing around and listened. I could still hear the dogs, but it sounded as if we had somehow managed to put a little distance between us and our pursuers. I was for moving on while we had a chance, but Scatha advised against it. “Let us stay here for a moment,” she urged, pushing deeper into the thicket.
Following her example, I wormed my way into the prickly embrace of the bush and settled down beside Scatha to wait. “Do you still have your spear?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Good,” I said and wished yet again that I had remembered to retrieve my spear when we dismounted. And then I wished for a flint and striker to make a fire—if not that, then at least a single firebrand to light our way. But neither wish appeared likely to be granted.
Yet, as we sat in the inky darkness, waiting for we knew not what, the accursed night loud with the barking of dogs, I imagined that my silver hand began to shine. The merest gleam at first, the faintest wink of a shimmer. I raised my hand to my face . . . the gleam vanished. I lowered my hand and it returned.
I craned my neck to look up and, to my surprise, glimpsed a pale eye peering back at me: the moon. Cloud-wrapped, a cold, wan, and waxy blur in the Sollen-black sky, and fitful as a ghost, it gave me heart nonetheless, and I willed the light to stay.
The dogs were right above us on the plain. They were almost upon us. I expected them to be at our throats any moment . . .
Scatha shifted. The glint of her spear blade pricked the gloom as she crouched forward to meet the attack. I felt around me for a stick to use as a club, but found nothing.
Meanwhile, the sound of pursuit had risen to a pitched din. The dogs were all around us, their cry deafening. I drew a last deep breath. Come on, I thought, do what you will. Amidst the baying I discerned the quick scatter of feet tearing through the undergrowth, and then, as quickly as it had grown, the sound began to dwindle away. Clasping one another’s hands, we held ourselves deathly still, hardly daring to believe we had escaped. Only when the sound had diminished to a distant echo did we relax.
The moonlight grew stronger. I could see the glimmer of Scatha’s eyes as she gazed steadily up the slope toward the plain. She felt my stare, turned her face toward me, and smiled. In that moment, she looked just like Goewyn. My heart clutched within me. She must have sensed my distress, for she said, “Are you hurt?”
“No, I was thinking of Goewyn.”
“We will find her, Llew.” Her tone offered certainty, warm and confident. If there was any doubt at all in her heart or mind, she kept it buried deep within her, for I heard no trace of it in her voice.
It was now light enough to distinguish broad shapes on the slope. We waited, listening. I became cold sitting still so long. “We should move on,” I said at last. “They might come back.”
“I will go first,” Scatha said and began slowly disentangling herself from the thorns. She crept from the thicket and I followed, stepping free of the prickly branches to discover that we stood on the edge of an overgrown wood. In the faint moon glow, I could just about make out the rim of the circular plain a short distance above.
“The sky is clearing somewhat. We may be able to see the camp from up there,” I said, thinking that if we could not find Tegid, we might at least locate the camp.
Scatha agreed and we climbed slowly back up the slope, gained the rim, and stood gazing across the plain. I had hoped to see the yellow fire glow from the camp—the ruddy smudge of the blaze reflected on the low clouds, at least—but there was nothing. I thought of shouting for Tegid and Cynan, then thought better of it. No sense in alerting the dogs.
“Well,” I said, “if we stay close to the edge, we should reach camp eventually.”
“We can also retreat to the wood if need be,” Scatha pointed out. Quickly, silently, like two shadows stealing over the dull gray field, we fled. Scatha, spear ready in her hand, led the way, and I maintained a constant lookout behind, scanning the plain for any sign of the camp, or of Tegid—I would have been delighted to find either. We ran a fair distance, and I became aware of a spectral flicker out of the corner of my eye. Thinking I had seen the campfire, I stopped walking and turned . . . but if I had seen anything, it was gone.
Scatha halted when I did. “I thought I saw something,” I explained. “It is gone now.”
A moment later, it was back.
We had hardly put one foot in front of the other when I saw the strange flittering shimmer once again—just on the edge of sight. And as before, I stopped and turned to look.
“There is something out there,” I told Scatha.
“I do not see anything.”
“Nor do I. But it was there.”
And again, as soon as we began walking, the glimmering image returned. This time, I did not stop, nor did I look directly at it. Rather, I let the subtle shifting glow play on the periphery of my vision while I tried to observe it to learn what it might be.
All I could perceive, however, was a fickle gleam in the air—as if the chill moonlight itself had thickened and congealed into elongated strands and diaphanous filaments that streamed through the night-dark air, rippling and waving like seaweed underwater.
Yet, each time I turned my head, thinking to catch a glimpse, the phantoms vanished. There was, I decided, a phenomenon at work similar to the erratic light of certain stars which are clearly discernible when the eye is looking elsewhere, but which disappear completely when an attempt is made to view them directly.
We walked along, and I soon observed that the amorphous shapes were not confined to the plain; they swarmed the air above and on every side. Whichever way I turned my head, I glimpsed, as if on the very edge of sight, the floating, curling shapes, merging, blending, wafting all around us.
“Scatha,” I said, softly. She halted. “No—keep walking. Do not stop.” We resumed, and I said, “It is just that the shapes—the phantoms seem to be gathering. There are more of them now, and they are all around us. Can you see them?”
“No,” she said. “I see nothing, Llew.” She paused for a moment and then said, “What do they look like?”
Bless you, Pen-y-Cat, I thought, for not thinking me mad. “They look like . . . like shreds of mist, or spiders’ webs drifting on the breeze.”
“Do they move?”
“Constantly. Like smoke, they are always blending and changing shape. I find that if I do not look at them directly, I can see them.”
We walked on and after a while I began to discern that the phantom shapes were coalescing into more substantial forms, thicker, more dense. They still merged and melted into one another, but they seemed to be amassing substance. With this change, I also felt my silver hand begin to tingle with the cold—not the hand itself, but the place where the metal met flesh.
I thought this an effect of the cold night air, then reflected that cold weather had never affected me in that way before. Indeed, my metallic hand had always seemed impervious to either heat or cold. Always, that is, except once: the day I discovered the beacon.
I puzzled over this as we ran along. Could it be that my metallic appendage, whatever other properties it possessed, functioned as some sort of warning device? Given the fantastic nature of the hand itself and how it had come to attach itself to me, that seemed the least implausible of its wonders. Indeed, everything about the silver hand suggested a more than passing affinity with mystery and strange powers.
If my silver hand possessed the ability to alert its owner of impending danger, what, I wondered, did its warning now portend?
So absorbed had I become in these thoughts, that I ceased attending to the shifting shapes on the edge of my vision. When I again observed them, I froze in midstep. The phantoms had solidified and were now of an almost uniform size, though still without recognizable form; they appeared as huge filmy blobs of congealed mist and air, roughly the size of ale vats. Something else about them had changed too. And it was this, I think, that stopped me: there was a distinct awareness about them, almost a sentience. Indeed, it was as if the phantom shapes seemed eager, or excited—impatient, perhaps.
For, as I hastened to rejoin Scatha, I sensed an agitation in the eerie shapes—as if my movement somehow frustrated the phantoms and threw them into turmoil. A strange and unsettled feeling overcame me then, for it seemed that the wraiths were aware of my presence and capable of responding to it.
Meanwhile, the frosty tingling in my silver hand had become a definite throbbing chill, striking up into my arm. I quickened my stride and drew even with Scatha. “Keep moving,” I told her. “The phantoms know we are here. They seem to be following us.”
Following was not the precise word I wanted. The things were all around us—in the air above and on the ground on every side. It was more that we were traversing a dense and hostile wood where every leaf was an enemy and every branch a foe.
Without slackening her pace, she raised her spear and indicated a patch of darkness to the right. “I see the glow of a fire ahead.”
A dull yellow glow winked low on the horizon. “It must be the camp,” I said, and an icy realization washed over me. That explains their agitation, I thought. The phantoms do not want us to reach camp. “Hurry! We can make it.”
The words were hardly out of my mouth when Scatha threw her arm across my chest to stop me. In the same instant, a sweetly gangrenous stink reached my nostrils—the same as I had smelled coming from the dead horses. The gorge rose in my throat.
Scatha recognized the odor too. “Siabur,” she cursed, all but gagging on the word.
I heard a soft, plopping sound and saw a bulbous shape fall onto the ground a few paces ahead of us. The sickly-sweet stink intensified, bringing tears to my eyes. The round blue-black blob lay quivering for a moment, and then gathered itself like a bead of water on a hot surface. At the same time, it seemed to harden, for it stopped trembling and began to unfold its legs from around a bulging stomach. Its head emerged, beaded, with eyes on top and a crude pincer mouth below.
I understood then what I had been seeing. The wraiths were those creatures Tegid called the sluagh. And now, by means of whatever power they possessed, the things had gathered sufficient strength to take on material form as a siabur. The immaterial had solidified, and the form it took was that of a grotesquely bloated spider. But a spider unlike any I had ever seen: green black as a bruise in the moonlight, with a hairy, distended belly and long, spindly legs ending with a single claw for a foot, and freakishly large—easily the size and girth of a toddling child.
The immense body glistened with a liquid ooze. The siabur made a slobbering sound as it dragged its repulsive bulk over the grass.
“It is ghastly!” breathed Scatha, and with two quick strides she was over it, her spear poised. Up went her arm, and then down. The spear pierced the creature behind its grotesque head, pinning it neatly to the ground. The siabur squirmed, emitting a bloodless shriek; its legs twitched and its mouth parts clashed.
Scatha twisted the spear; the fragile legs folded and the thing collapsed in a palpitating heap. She raised the spear and drove it into the creature’s swelling middle. A noxious gas sputtered out and the loathsome thing seemed to melt, its body losing solid form and liquefying once more into a blob that simply dissolved, leaving a foul-smelling blotch glistening on the grass.
My feet were already moving as the siabur evaporated. I caught Scatha by the arm and pulled her away. I heard the sound of another soft body fall just to the right, and another where we had been standing a moment before. Scatha twisted toward the sound. “Leave it!” I shouted. “Run for the camp.”
We ran. All around us the night quivered with the sound of those hideous bloated bodies plopping onto the ground. There were scores, hundreds of the odious things. And still they kept coming, dropping out of the air like the obscene precipitation of a putrid rain.
The stench fouled the air. My breath came in ragged gasps that burned my throat and lungs. Tears flowed down my cheeks. My nose ran freely.
The long grass tugged at our feet as if to hinder us. The plain was alive with crawling siabur heaving their gross shapes over the ground, scrabbling, struggling, straining to get at us. Their thin legs churned and their drooling mouths sucked. They would swarm us the moment we halted or hesitated. And then we would become like the horses we had seen that morning: dry husks with the lifeblood sucked from our bodies.
Our path grew difficult and running became hazardous as we were forced to dodge this way and that to avoid the scuttling spiders. My silver hand burned with the cold.
A siabur appeared directly in my path and I vaulted over it. As my feet left the ground, I felt a cold weight between my shoulder blades— long legs groped for my neck. Its touch was the stiff cold touch of a dead thing. I flailed with my arms, dislodged the creature, and flung it to the ground where it squirmed and shrieked.
Another took its place. The dead cold weight clasped my shoulder, and I felt a sharp, icy bite at the base of my neck. An exquisite chill spread through me from the neck and shoulders down my back and sides and into my thighs and legs. I stopped running. The darkness became close, suffocating. My face grew numb; I could not feel my arms or legs. My eyelids drooped; I longed for sleep . . . sleep and forgetting . . . oblivion . . . I would sleep—but for a small voice crying out very far away. Soon that voice would be stilled . . .
Hearing my shout, Scatha whirled around me and, with a well-placed kick, detached the siabur from my neck. A quick jab of her spear pierced the spider through its swollen sac. The wicked thing wriggled, then dissolved into jellied slime and melted away.
My vision cleared and my limbs began to shake. I felt Scatha’s hands lifting me. I tried to get my feet under me, but could not feel my legs. “Llew, Llew,” Scatha crooned softly. “I have you. I will carry you.” She helped me stand. I took two wobbly steps and pitched onto my face. The siabur rushed in at once—they could move with startling speed. I kicked out and struck one. It squealed and scurried out of the way, but two more charged me. Their claw-tipped legs snagged the cloth of my breecs as I thrashed on the ground.
Scatha stabbed the first one as it clawed at me and, with a quick backward chop, sliced the second one in half. Then, planting her foot, she pivoted to the side and skewered two more as they scuttled nearer. A third tried to evade her, but she pierced the swell-bellied thing, lifted it on the point of her spear and flung it hissing into the air.
Using all her strength, Scatha hauled me upright and drove me forward once more. Tottering like an old man, I stumbled ahead. Moving helped; I regained the use of my limbs and was soon covering ground quickly again. We bolted for the edge of the plain and the wooded slopes below, where I hoped we might more easily elude them. A cluster of siabur tried to cut off our escape, but Scatha’s inspired spear-work cleared the way and we reached the slope to a chorus of sharp angry squeals.
We gained the edge and plunged down the slope. The air was clean and I gulped it down greedily. My vision cleared, and my nose and lungs stopped burning. Upon reaching the first fringe of the wood, I glanced back to see the siabur boiling over the brim of the plain in a vile, throbbing flood. Although I had expected pursuit, my heart sank when I saw their number: the scores and hundreds had become thousands and tens of thousands.
They flowed down the slope in an enormous pulsating avalanche, shrieking as they came. There was no stopping them, and no escape.